Local Marketing

Print & Online Local Search Marketing

Local businesses have been a staple of our communities for years. Today operating a small business is challenging. It’s not just essential to known the ins and outs of your business; you must also navigate the dynamic environment of digital marketing.

Local search advertising is no longer as simple as putting an ad in your local Yellow Pages. You need to show up in search engine local results, have your business information on hundreds of online directories, and ensure your business is at the forefront of mobile search, all while maintaining traditional print local marketing initiatives.

With this surge in local marketing outlets, BIA/Kelsey predicted local search marketing revenues to grow to over $8.2 billion in 2015 – up from $5.1 billion in 2014.

Local: It’s Where You Need to Be

The challenging part of local search marketing is that there are so many places that you need to be. First and foremost, you need to ensure that your business appears in the local listings on the Google search engine results page for a local search term. Here’s an example of what that looks like:

To improve your ranking here and also ensure that you are present in all varieties of local search, here’s a few key areas to watch out for:

Keep your listings up to date on Google+, Yelp, Yellow Pages, Bing, Yahoo, and all other major search engines and directories.

Monitor your listings across the major listing sites and other smaller players to ensure that no incorrect information is out there. Local listing sites use spiders to pull local business information from other listing sites. If your business information is wrong in one place, it can be proliferated across thousands of sites.

Optimize your Google+ page to enhance the positioning of your business in the local search section of the Google search engine results page. In fact, a study of 315 local businesses revealed that optimizing their Google+ pages boosted rankings.

Consumers Have Gone Local

There’s a reason local search marketing revenues are increasing at a rate of 10% annually. Local search is driven by consumers’ use of mobile phones to find what they are looking for. Let’s take a look at some 2014 statistics that outline how consumers have gone local and how those local searches convert:

59% of consumers use Google every month to find reputable, local businesses. That’s more than half of Google’s 8 billion+ monthly searches targeted at local businesses.